Twitter is not for private conversations
I like Twitter, it can be a lot of fun. Of course, it does get old hearing that "I’m having Wheaties with blueberries" because I just can’t relate to that statement when I’m reading it at 3 in the afternoon. I do find some interesting and even useful information at times, it’s kind of like finding that nugget of gold by panning at the creek, at least that’s how rare it is since you have to sift through all the noise. One part of the Twitter conversation that has annoyed me from day one and I’m now finding it even more so now that the world has discovered Twitter is the semi-private conversations that are taking place all the time. If you follow very many people on Twitter you’re bombarded by the "@" Twitters that are directed to a particular person in response to something that person has Twittered first. Invariably the other side of their "conversation" is someone you don’t follow on Twitter so you only see one side of the exchange. This doesn’t sound like much but sometimes it seems all you see on your Twitter page are replies to specific individuals, which in my view goes against what makes Twitter so appealing. Seeing all those @ replies is like listening to one side of a phone conversation, it means nothing to me and becomes part of the Twitter noise.
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James- since you have often mentioned Twitter….is there a good summary of how Twitter works and how you can get into it. Also…do you have to list specific people when you join…or is there a way to just “listen in”. For example, Kevin, I think, has mentioned that he gets good tech info….is the because he has specified certain people who chitchat tech? Sorry for the dummy comment, but after I read about it enough on your site, I just wanna give it a try. Thanks, and keep up the great work!
Albertkarel, getting onto Twitter is easy, just go to twitter.com and sign up. You can follow Twitter on the web or on your phone and you can even post your own Twitters from your phone. The best way to get started is to visit the Twitter help page when you’re on their site, they have detailed information for how it works and how you can maximize your benefit from it.
@jkendrick: I agree.
Hi, James. I can see where you’re coming from, and there a lots of Tweeters who are guilty of using it like too much like IM. However, sometimes I will catch an @ comment and then surf over to the person’s Twitter page and see the rest of the conversation has some interesting info. I have to say, there have been quite a few conversations that Kevin had that lead me to some interesting links. Or when people were talking about big news items that I hadn’t yet read about.
Perhaps it’s the busybody in me, but I don’t mind the @ comments that much. :) If you go over to Jaiku, you’re able to directly comment on someone’s post, and the conversation can occur in a more organized fashion, like mini forum threads. I think Jaiku handles that aspect of community better than Twitter, but I still hang out on both.
Yes, the @’s can be annoying like overheard cell phone conversations, however, once in a while, I read something interesting in an @ conversation and paste the twitter-name it was directed to and add them to those I follow. It is so much easier to ignore the @s then cell talkers, it doesn’t bother me.
I call people who do that “Twitter@i” (Twitter-at-i). I have sometimes tried to hop over to an unfollowed page to see what a “Twitter@i” is talking about, but I can rarely figure it out. I will occasionally do an @, myself, but I try to make sure the tweet can stand on its own. I don’t much mind the @’s.